Waiting Is Both Patience and Impatience (How Our Mindset Can Change the Experience of Waiting)
The Everyday Struggle of Waiting
Once I fully started thinking about how much of life is “waiting,” I realized something simple but powerful:
Waiting can feel like patience or impatience — and the difference is what’s happening inside us.
There are days when I wait with peace and trust. And there are days when waiting feels like pure frustration. It’s the same situation — but how I’m thinking makes all the difference.
What My Father Told Me About Waiting
My father told me when I was a kid:
“Kid, we spend 85% of our lives waiting on something or someone. Think about it — when you’re hungry, you have to buy and make the food — waiting is involved. Whether you’re waiting for a ride, or whatever you’re doing in life, waiting is involved. Some folks get mad when they wait and make it worse. Some know how to wait and take it easy.”
That stuck with me.
Biblical Patience Is Not Passive
Later, as I studied patience in the Bible, I began to understand how true it is — and how much patience really matters in life.
Patience is tolerance — it’s waiting with purpose. It’s endurance:
👉 “For what credit is there if when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God.”
1 Peter 2:20 (NASB)
In Greek: hupomeno (5278) — “to stay under, to remain, to endure with fortitude.”
The Inner Experience of Waiting
I know what impatience feels like — when the day is dark and I can’t get my way, when I’m upset with everyone (including myself!).
And I know what patience feels like — peace, calmness, ease toward others and situations.
When you understand patience, it’s no longer just an emotion — it’s a decision. A choice in how you will wait and endure.
“But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God.”
— 1 Peter 2:20
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